Chop Shop (2007)
7/10
Doing what it takes to survive
15 January 2009
I enjoyed Ramin Bahrani's Man Push Cart, and this film is equally good. This slice of life is almost a documentary about how life on the edges is lived.

Alejandro Polanco and Isamar Gonzales do an excellent job as a 12-year-old brother and a 16-year-old sister who live in a small room over an auto shop. There are no parents; they are on their own surviving. Ali supplements his income by stealing auto parts, selling bootleg DVDs and selling candy on the subway. Izzie supplements her income working a food truck by selling herself. They are trying to make money to but their own truck.

One is tempted to express outrage at the fact that these two children are left to fend on their own, and certainly one can be very upset that Izzie sells her body to willing truckers, but the fact is that this exists today in the world's richest country, not some underdeveloped land. Save the outrage and do something.
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